Portugal's horrendous abusive dog culture, nation-wide
Portuguese people will absolutely bite your head off if you say anything negative about how they treat their dogs, and their lack of training. Expect dog shit in cities, no one picks it up. Dogs are left off leach often, even where they’re not allowed to be. Dogs will jump on you, owners expect you to accept that. Dogs are mostly badly trained, if at all, and have no recall skills. Owners will just keep shouting the dog’s name while the dog ignores them and harasses you.
Lookup the balcony-dogs phenomenon, dogs are often neglected and end up barking the whole time for attention causing a lot of noise. Portuguese answers: “They’re dogs, they bark”
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Comments6
Purple Mustard
May 28, 2025
Ye this is sad,
I have a neighbour across the road, I can see their balcony.
They just bought a new dog, and the dog majority of the day just sits on this balcony looking out.
At first the kids played with it a lot, and then more and more I see them less. Feel really bad for the dog, also it's getting so hot now, surely cannot be good for it.
What are my options?
Rose Exoplanet
May 26, 2025
True. This is a good one.
Purple Apple
May 26, 2025
I’m portuguese and I lived abroad 11 years, 5 years in London and then 6 years in the Netherlands.
I owned a house in the Netherlands in Zaandam, very close to the nature and in my street pretty much half of the houses owned at least one dog. Never heard barking. Never!
Came back to Portugal 2 years ago, bought a house in Mafra in a street with dogs in every two houses. I can’t believe the noise of dogs barkings all day and night because owners leave them in the front of the house 24h day (doesn’t matter if it is cold, raining, or just hot summer heat, they are always there), some houses with 2 dogs! Barking at night. Nobody can do anything.
Already complained to the municipality, called the police (GNR) more than 20 times, spoke with the owners who were VERY disrespectful. It is unbelievable. Now here I am, after spending 360k in a house and have to deal with dogs barking constantly with noise levels way higher than the law permits.
Lime Sand
May 26, 2025
This one is similar:
https://onlyinportugal.com/en/p/walk-bark-cry-repeat
An Anonymous User
May 26, 2025
Dogs won’t stop barking at night
So when we have the window open for fresh air, we’ll have neighbor dogs literally barking ALL night
We checked with the law and that’s illegal. Dogs are supposed to be silent from 11pm to 7am by law. We had to send a letter to threaten to report them to the GNR (local police), it stopped, kind of.
Portuguese people use dogs as cheap security systems. Many keep them outside at night, which in most countries would be abusive, as it can get quite cold here at night too. And often their lives are spent on balconies and they’re barely walked.
In addition, most dogs because they’re made to be security dogs, are very aggressive. Try walking down any street in Portugal around sunset or night and you’ll get aggressive dogs barking at you in crowds.
A few times I got chased by an aggressive guard dog because it wasn’t on a leash or behind a fence. Mental
Pink Rice
May 26, 2025
Correct. My girlfriend’s dog was savagely attacked by a larger dog (sadly, I wasn’t there).
Dogs room freely around our village and chase children.
‘It’s our way of life’.
Yeah? It’s dumb.